COLUMNS
Talk Show 17 with Jennifer Haigh, Margot Livesey, Mark Jude Poirier, Stacey Richter, Daniel Wallace
/ Jaime Clarke
09.10.08
––What kinds of preparations were made in advance of the trip?
Haigh: Nobody had driven the camper in fifteen years, but J had spent part of the summer tinkering with the engine and had managed to get it running.
Livesey: I prepared by reading Kerouac's On the Road and buying a map. Neither were of much help although I did encounter people who seemed very much like Kerouac characters. There were some hippies who were going to Florida in a hearse who invited me to join them several times. The fact that a mattress lay where the coffin once would have put me off.
Poirier: My friend Elaine’s mother threw blankets and sweatshirts into the car before we rolled out of her driveway. It was like 100 degrees, honestly, so I don’t know why she insisted on blankets and sweatshirts.
Richter: We pooled all of our money and subtracted what we needed for gas and food. The rest went for the drugs. We ended up with a couple hundred bucks, which was enough for a little cocaine (entirely consumed the first night), a bag of pot, and a few doses of hallucinogenic mushrooms, which we ate at Disneyland.
Wallace: We were well-prepared. I’d been working that year, living at home, so I had nice chunk of change. We bought a tent and a stove and sleeping bags. We bought food. The car: one of the first Toyota Corollas anybody in Alabama had ever seen. What a great car that was. It had two doors, an engine, brakes, accelerator, headlamps – the essence of carness, and no more. There wasn’t even a radio. We packed and re-packed using scientific space-consolidation measures, which included removing the backseat. But there still wasn’t enough room, so we had to buy a rooftop carrier. We spent a lot of time planning our route as well. Deciding whether to go south, through New Orleans, or straight across on I-40. We took I-40. We had six weeks, and we wanted to get out to California quick, take Highway 1 to Oregon, then to Montana and down to Indiana, where Mary had a friend. From there we’d go to D.C. to see my sister, and then trickle on back to Alabama. We knew where we were going to be every single night. Of course, it didn’t work out that way, but we pretended it was going to. Planning a trip is like writing a story in that way. It’s good to pretend you know what you’re doing.
Haigh: Nobody had driven the camper in fifteen years, but J had spent part of the summer tinkering with the engine and had managed to get it running.
Livesey: I prepared by reading Kerouac's On the Road and buying a map. Neither were of much help although I did encounter people who seemed very much like Kerouac characters. There were some hippies who were going to Florida in a hearse who invited me to join them several times. The fact that a mattress lay where the coffin once would have put me off.
Poirier: My friend Elaine’s mother threw blankets and sweatshirts into the car before we rolled out of her driveway. It was like 100 degrees, honestly, so I don’t know why she insisted on blankets and sweatshirts.
Richter: We pooled all of our money and subtracted what we needed for gas and food. The rest went for the drugs. We ended up with a couple hundred bucks, which was enough for a little cocaine (entirely consumed the first night), a bag of pot, and a few doses of hallucinogenic mushrooms, which we ate at Disneyland.
Wallace: We were well-prepared. I’d been working that year, living at home, so I had nice chunk of change. We bought a tent and a stove and sleeping bags. We bought food. The car: one of the first Toyota Corollas anybody in Alabama had ever seen. What a great car that was. It had two doors, an engine, brakes, accelerator, headlamps – the essence of carness, and no more. There wasn’t even a radio. We packed and re-packed using scientific space-consolidation measures, which included removing the backseat. But there still wasn’t enough room, so we had to buy a rooftop carrier. We spent a lot of time planning our route as well. Deciding whether to go south, through New Orleans, or straight across on I-40. We took I-40. We had six weeks, and we wanted to get out to California quick, take Highway 1 to Oregon, then to Montana and down to Indiana, where Mary had a friend. From there we’d go to D.C. to see my sister, and then trickle on back to Alabama. We knew where we were going to be every single night. Of course, it didn’t work out that way, but we pretended it was going to. Planning a trip is like writing a story in that way. It’s good to pretend you know what you’re doing.